[REL]ROW Pacific Environments 3.3

[akdavis]

Perhaps this might offer some more hints. On pulling into Lurker's Lorient, I saw that the German tanker had more normal reflections:



However, the 5 or 6 various other merchants in harbor had the white reflections. Here is a vivid contrast between the white ship reflection and the more normal reflections of waterside structures (especially the very nicely reflected bunkers!):



(FPS is not normally that low, but this Lorient is a bit intense, and very beautiful with PE3.)

[Nisgeis]

I did a split comparison in gimp and the stock reflection is almost the same as the milky white reflection. It's almost as though the reflection being generated is using the original colour of the sea, the light blue colour. It's actually more or less the same colour as the reflections in stock, it just looks lighter because of the contrast between the darker sea.

Here's akdavis' screenshots, with the first one placed side by side:



The reflection seems to be the same colour, but looks smoother as the water doesn't have any dark bands in it.

[vickers03]

the problem lies in the reflex_pac.tga,
changing it with the one out of
environment mod 4.3 gives darker reflections.

[kriller2]

You are all hardworking men/modders! , thanks for looking into this issue. I think we have something to work from now, as I remember it Dave had the same problem in ROW ? - My guess would be that the SH4 engine uses one of the textures from the reflex map to make the reflection and as I remember it the one with the colour seen above is the texture nr. 2 from the top of the reflexpac.tga, so maybe changing this will help.. :hmm:

Im getting married to my fiancee a month from now and have a little 2 year old son who allso demands my attention more and more , so help is appreciated on these issues.

[MONOLITH]

Originally Posted by vickers03

the problem lies in the reflex_pac.tga,
changing it with the one out of
environment mod 4.3 gives darker reflections.

If I remember correctly, the reflex_pac is the file that was changed to get rid of the "beer foam" colors.

I'd rather live with the light ship reflections than the beer foam.

[akdavis]

Originally Posted by Nisgeis

I did a split comparison in gimp and the stock reflection is almost the same as the milky white reflection. It's almost as though the reflection being generated is using the original colour of the sea, the light blue colour. It's actually more or less the same colour as the reflections in stock, it just looks lighter because of the contrast between the darker sea.

Here's akdavis' screenshots, with the first one placed side by side:



The reflection seems to be the same colour, but looks smoother as the water doesn't have any dark bands in it.

You are right in that they are closer than at first they might appear, but there is a tone difference (PE3 left, stock right):

[Digital_Trucker]

Isn't each ships reflection contained in it's dat file? I seem to remember that being a problem when Dave was working on the subs reflections. I just took a look at the Colorado and there is a node (203 in 1.4 stock) for a 3D model of the reflection. If that model is used to create a reflection of a certain color (to match the stock water), could that be causing the problem? :hmm:Just a thought, since the reflection looks the same in both shots.

[vickers03]

the reflection color is in the reflexpac.tga,
the shape of the reflection is of course the 3d model.

[Digital_Trucker]

Originally Posted by vickers03

the reflection color is in the reflexpac.tga,
the shape of the reflection is of course the 3d model.

What I meant is that there is a seperate 3D model in the dat for the reflection.


Like I said, it was just a thought caused by remembering the work that Dave was doing on submarine reflections. IIRC he was planning on looking into doing reflection work on the ships after he finished the subs, which made me think that there was something different about each vessels reflection.

[DrBeast]

Originally Posted by Digital_Trucker

Like I said, it was just a thought caused by remembering the work that Dave was doing on submarine reflections. IIRC he was planning on looking into doing reflection work on the ships after he finished the subs, which made me think that there was something different about each vessels reflection.

He did try, but I remember him stating that there was way too much work involved trying to get the ship reflections v1.4-compatible, although he had made a wonderful version for 1.3, bless his soul.

[Digital_Trucker]

Well, it seems awfully strange (and perhaps it is a visual trick or something strange about my install), but, on my machine, the submarine hull's reflection looks normal, but the conning tower's reflection is washed out (white) looking like the ship's reflections in the earlier pictures. If the scene.dat or the reflexpac.tga controlled all the reflection colors, would there be differences between different parts of a vessel?:hmm: